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2016 President · NC

YouGov · fieldwork ended 2016-10-20 (19 days before the election) · 2,916 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 43.5% · Republican 41.3%

D+2.2

The certified result

Democrat 46.17% · Republican 49.83%

R+3.7

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 43.5 − 41.3 = 2.20
  2. Actual margin = 46.173 − 49.828 = -3.655
  3. Signed miss = 2.20 − (-3.655) = 5.855
  4. Absolute miss = |5.855| = 5.855

The poll overstated the Democrat by 5.9 points and had the wrong leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 48752, race ID 629 (538 database).